But we were just talking to them!

June 8, 2007

Interesting article today on a European investigator having “factually established” that the CIA has been running interrogation centers in Poland and Romania for suspected Al Queda operatives. From this article, the evidence looks overwhelming. A Gulfstream aircraft, for example, is logged at flying from Dulles Airport in Washington to Frankfurt on July 27, 2003, and from Tashkent, Uzbekistan to Dulles on July 31, 2003.

Where did the four days in between go, and how did the plane relocate from Frankfurt to Tashkent?

Well, there are records indicating the plane landing in Poland at a remote airstrip on July 30 after a flight from Afghanistan, landing at 3 AM.

Hmmm.

Another plane is recorded as flying from Kabul, Afghanistan to the same Polish airstrip, then to Romania (the site of another rumored detainee center), then to Rabat, Morocco and finally Guantanamo Bay (an acknowledged detainee center).

If we assume there are detainee centers in those countries, how should we react? I’d say: with contempt and shame but not surprise. After all, who can be surprised by the CIA? This is an organization that has historically promoted coups, assassinations, possibly drug trafficking, torture and psychological warfare in order to promote its own goals. I have no idea if these detention centers are necessary in the grand scheme of things. I have no idea if they have helped us prevent attacks on the United States or Western Europe, or if “interrogation” has given us leads to help fight the War on Terror. I will freely admit that I despise the possibility they might be necessary. The world is a dirty place, and it’s horrible to think we’ve been pushed down to a level where we hide people in foreign countries to torture them. I hate the fact that we live in a world where we even have to argue whether or not these kind of places are a necessary evil.

The world is kind of a wearying place sometimes, you know? Maybe it’s better not to think about it.